How can I clear a flag during workflow

[Eric Eric]

We have a flag called "triaged" that we set after Product Management has looked at an incoming issue, set or verified the priority, and overall looked that the ticket has necessary information. We'd like that flag to be cleared in the event that the ticket is reopened, in case the priority or other fields need values. However, there are other checkboxes in the same field that need to remain as needed. We're trying to use the JIRA workflow toolbox plugin to perform that change for us, but are having problems coming up with the proper regular expression to use.

We have considered adding an additonal workflow state, but wanted to avoid that if possible, so we don't need to worry about making sure all of the transitions will work skipping that state or not.

[edit: add requirement to keep other checkboxes in same custom field as they were]

[Adam Saint-Prix · Accepted solution]

Ah ok, I see. I missed that part in your answer.

Is there a reason why you are bound to using a flag to indicate a ticket has been triaged? Can you separate that out from the other checkboxes so that this value can in fact be cleared without impacting other issue data? You may be too far down the line to change your approach, but I've seen other teams use labels for example to indicate a ticket had been triaged. I don't know if it's any easier to use the workflow to clear this value though as if there were other labels, you'd have the same issue I'd image.

I don't know. Hard to say without seeing first hand what you're working with what alternatives there might be, but just a thought. Sorry I couldnt' be more helpful.

[Derrick Taylor David]

If you are not dealing with a whole bunch of check boxes, what I would recommend is that you add these in as separate workflow actions.

Each workflow action that would take it from the step you are currently at and send it to the same step as you are currently using, but each one of them would perform the action a little differently. Workflow action one would with clear the Triaged field and then set it to check box option A if the workflow validates that only Option A is set, while Similarly named workflow action to clear the Triaged field and then set it to check box option B if the workflow validates that only Option B is set and so on and so forth. The user would not know any difference but you would have Jira update the fields based on validation rules.

[Adam Saint-Prix]

Will the clear field value post function not work in this case? I know you can use that to purge field values on a number of fields, including custom fields. I'd imagine it would work on a check box field, but I could be wrong. Have you tried that already and it didn't work?

In this image, the same post function is used on the Resolution field.

http://confluence.atlassian.com/download/attachments/236588650/workflow-view_postfunctions.png?version=1&modificationDate=1240007652250

[Eric Eric]

The issue with clear value is that it also removes the rest of the checkboxes in the same group. We have other checkboxes in the one field that need to remain.

[Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]]

That seems a specific requirement. You might need to write a post function of your own. Much similar to the other one.